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Tim Tebow, unfiltered

The Gators had their first scrimmage of the season today, and Tim Tebow was a little late arriving to his post-practice press conference. OK, a lot late — Urban Meyer spoke around 10 a.m., and Tebow didn’t join us until about 1 p.m.

But it turned out to be a blessing. The long wait weeded out several reporters, and when Tebow finally did arrive, we had a great low-key, informal press conference with just a handful of reporters. Interviewing Tebow is always the best when the television cameras aren’t shining in his face and 45 reporters aren’t jamming microphones in front of him.

What did we learn about Tebow today? The Ole Miss loss still eats at him. He still hasn’t read the Sports Illustrated article. He’s becoming BFF with the cameramen from TMZ. And he’s a big Arizona Diamondbacks fan, apparently (he was rocking a D-Backs fleece and mesh shorts).

Here are selected highlights. Enjoy.

Even after winning the championship last year and all of the good things that came from it, does the Ole Miss loss still sting?

“Yeah it does, especially every time you get asked, ‘What happened on that fourth and short when you got stuffed?’ I think it definitely does. A comment like that even motivates me even more, because I get irritated to myself about that. I think if you ask Spikes or the Pounceys or anyone, ask them about it, they’ll still say (the loss) irritates them.”

“A loss is still frustrating to everybody, although a lot of good came from it. That’s one of the good things about our team, though, is how upset and mad we get about something like that. We get pretty self motivated from things like that, and irritated, and we still use that today in practice.”

What’s it like when you read or hear on TV that you are already in the discussion for greatest college football player of all-time?

“I’d just rather not even hear about it til I’m done with college and everything. I just want to go work and get isolated about everything. It’s definitely humbling and an honor when people talk about it, or write something or they mention it, it’s definitely humbling, but I don’t want to hear it. I just want to go play ball.”

What about when they talk about you on TV? We know you like to watch SportsCenter and stuff.

“I usually don’t watch anything. I usually just watch like NFL stuff. Sometimes I’ll watch it as motivation if it’s sort of a negative thing, but I usually don’t watch anything or read anything. I still haven’t read the Sports Illustrated article, although I hear about it, people tell me this was nice or whatever, but I’m not a big reader of myself or watching it. Some things I will because I know it motivates me and it will irritate me. We’ll have a few highlight videos from the team that will show us getting stopped and then us doing good, Alabama drive, Oklahoma, and that will fire me up. But as far as watching it on ESPN, that’s just different, I don’t pay it too much attention. You can usually see it on the ticker thing what’s coming up.”

How do you deal with all of the exposure? Any time you go out in public, people are taking pictures of you and putting them on the internet.

“It’s good and it’s bad. That can be obviously frustrating some times. You wish people would just be real fans instead of always wanting something from it.”

“We’ve become pretty used to that. Every time we fly in for one of those awards there’s always those guys, and usually they’re the same ones at the airport. We’ve seen them in New York, Connecticut, Fort Worth, the same guys, so it’s not a shock. They’ll do something to get a reaction, but what can people do if you’re just nice to them?”

Is working under center, was that a little bit a smokescreen or will we see you use that during games?

“It won’t be our main offense but I think you’ll see it. It depends how it goes in the early games and here at camp. I feel comfortable in it, obviously most of my life I’ve been a shotgun and that’s been very easy for me, but dropping back from under center is not very hard.”